Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), [1] best known by his pen name Mark Twain , was an American writer, humorist , entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced", [2] and William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature ". [3] His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), [4] the latter of which has often been called the " Great American No
Twain was raised in Hannibal, Missouri , which later provided the setting for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn . He served an apprenticeship with a printer and then worked as a typesetter, contributing articles to the newspaper of his older brother Orion Clemens . He later became a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River before heading west to join Orion in Nevada . He referred humorously to his lack of success at mining, turning to journalism for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise . [5] His humorous
Twain earned a great deal of money from his writing and lectures, but invested in ventures that lost most of it—such as the Paige Compositor , a mechanical typesetter that failed because of its complexity and imprecision. He filed for bankruptcy in the wake of these financial setbacks, but in time overcame his financial troubles with the help of Standard Oil executive Henry Huttleston Rogers . He eventually paid all his creditors in full, even though his bankruptcy meant he did not have to do so.